Managing Music Database

[hardeep_singh]

I have a crap-ton of punjabi music that i've collected over the years and ive been trying to manage it for a while. i was previously using the program musikcube, which allows you to export and import library database files, but i got tired of dealing with that so decided to look for some other options. the program i just started using is mediamonkey(free version):
http://www.mediamonkey.com/download/
honestly its freaking awesome, it's claimed to be able to handle 100,000+ files, i'll test that sometime soon. it also is really helpful in sorting music because it allows you to rate tracks on the fly and to batch write ID3 tags, so what i've been doing is going through and rating the songs i deem worthy of my affection and then modifying the ID3 tags for sorting and tracking purposes. enjoy

 

[GSingh]

I use mp3tag + Foobar2000. Foobar is ugly until you spend about 4-6 hours tweaking it, adding plugins and a different library management system (columns UI). With that, its really efficient use of ram (with over 20,000 songs, it uses less than 19MB of ram), high quality sound and something that is distinctly *you* the way you imagine a database. You can create tabbed playlists or have em on the side as columns, dynamically change based on additions to a folder or have static ones. It processes replay gain so all your music will be played at the same relative volume regardless of mastering (if you wish).
If you don't have the time to tinker and customize your own look, there's a SHITTON of premade skins. (http://customize.org/foobar/skins)


Mediamonkey is a great alternative if you don't know how to tinker but its a bit more resource heavy (still a shitton better than iTunes).

mp3tag is a godsend. That is all.

 

[hardeep_singh]

i tried foobar and couldn't get past the ugliness, i'm enjoying mediamonkey's all-in-one-ness. i have a separate comp just for music/media so resource drain doesn't bother me at all, i love being able to delete songs from the comp from within mediamonkey and being able to edit hundreds of id3 tags in a short amount of time. its disgusting how much junk is in punjabi music files it's like the rippers just had to tag their whole tabars names in the metadata and on top of that you have the group tags "[RP]" in every important field, the worst is when the group tag is in the song title too.

 

[hardeep_singh]

what's good for BPM analysis?

 

[GSingh]

A lot of em will be wrong out of the nature of punjabi music. This one is decent though. http://download.cnet.com/MixMeister-BPM-Analyzer/3000-2169_4-10290906.html

 

[Basim]

I absolutely love mediamonkey. I've been using it to manage ID3 tags for years.

I also have an app on my phone for mediamonkey, so I can play music remotely using it.


It's a pretty amazing feeling to be playing music is one room and then be in a different part of the house/apartment and be able to remotely control everything for my music (i.e. play and stop tracks/skip tracks/fast forward and rewind/etc).


It's a must have app and combines seamlessly syncs with the latest version of mediamonkey.


~ Basim